A 19-year-old woman is dead and three others are missing after a canoe tipped into a frigid lake near an Eastern B.C. mountain village on Saturday.

By late Sunday, RCMP officials in New Denver were still categorizing search efforts as a rescue mission, hoping the three young men had managed to swim roughly 150 metres to shore. But the lake, fed by run-off from a glacier, was close to 4 C on Saturday, Sgt. Darryl Little said.

A hiker reported seeing two people clinging to a partially submerged canoe in the middle of a bay in Slocan Lake around 5:30 p.m Saturday.

But when emergency responders arrived, they found 19-year-old Lily Harmer-Taylor lying unconscious in the canoe. She later died in hospital.

It was extremely cold

The fact that the witness only saw two swimmers is concerning to rescuers, Sgt. Little said.

Two RCMP boats and a helicopter scanned the lake and shoreline Sunday, though the helicopter was called off after unsuccessful attempts to find the three youths, who range from 15 to 21 years old. By early Sunday evening, none of the missing had been found, police reported.

“It was extremely cold,” Sgt. Little said, though he could not estimate how long a swimmer could survive in the water.

The foursome borrowed a canoe Saturday morning from Dan Nicholson’s house in Rosebery, where the 19-year-old Ms. Harmer-Taylor was staying. They left the life jackets in the mud room and paddled six kilometres across the bay to New Denver, where they met up with friends and spent time at the beach.

Police reported that the lake was fairly calm Saturday, though there was some strong wind. Somewhere along the way back to Mr. Nicholson’s house, the canoe tipped.

“It’s been devastating,” Mr. Nicholson, a local newspaper publisher, said Sunday after the 19-year-old’s body was found. “It’s wrong.

“She was just a beautiful light and a joy to have in my house.”

The three missing are Skye Donnet, 18 and Jule Wiltshire-Padfield, 15, from New Denver, and Hayden Kyle, 21, from B.C.’s Sunshine Coast.

“It’s gonna be horrible,” said Mr. Nicholson. “It’s gonna be an ongoing nightmare for a long time. These kids they had so much heart and so much soul and so much joy.”

Divers were scheduled to start searching for bodies Monday morning, so on Sunday resort owner Isy Schumann offered them accommodations. And despite what the dive team represents, Ms. Schumann still expected the three to be found.

“Am I optimistic? I’d like to be,” said Ms. Schumann, who’d watched three of four canoeists grow up in the small village of roughly 500. “I’d like to hope for a miracle here.”